This invention relates to a carpet rolling machine which can be used to form a roll as carpet is manufactured, or comes from a final treatment machine after a manufacturing process, or as carpet is fed from a storage roll of large size in a warehouse or the like.
Heretofore it has been common practice for the edge of a piece of carpet to be manually turned to form an incipient roll supported by two or more rollers which are then rotated to complete the operation. This process has two basic disadvantages. Firstly, carpet is often produced and handled in widths of three meters or more, so that the initial manual forming of an incipient roll, with or without a central supporting tube needs three persons and a degree of skill. If the operation is badly performed the resultant roll may be creased or otherwise malformed resulting in damage to the carpet. Secondly, the rollers used are often of the type having spaced annular gripping means, resembling vehicle tires, which can in certain circumstances cause damage to the carpet face or to delicate backings such as foamed plastic materials. A still further disadvantage of such machines is that when carpet is fed to them in a particular disposition, i.e. pile up or pile down, they can only form a roll with the pile directed inwardly or outwardly as the case may be. It is desirable that whatever the original disposition of the carpet a rolling machine should be able to form a pile-in or pile-out roll at will to enable the better form of roll to be selected having regard to the properties of the pile and backing.
A number of proposals have been made to eliminate the aforesaid disadvantages. For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,850,381 a carpet rolling machine is proposed utilizing as guides flexible bands connected to rollers and act in conjunction with four carpet support rollers to effect either a face-in or face-out rolling of the carpet, the rotational direction of the support rollers being varied accordingly. When pile-out is to be formed a fifth roller is bodily moved from a remote position toward the four rollers. The carpet roll is formed between the nip of the support rollers, the upper two of which are moved away from the lower pair as the carpet roll grows. Also as the carpet roll grows the entire carpet roll will walk over the lower pair of rollers toward the fifth roller. Since the support rollers have annular gripping means the aforesaid disadvantage of potential damage to the carpet face or to delicate backings remains a problem.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,002,308 a carpet roll is formed in the nip between a pair of lower fixed axis rollers and a pair of upper moveable axis rollers which are bodily moved apart as the carpet roll grows. Pile-in or pile-out is obtained by controlling the rotational direction of the rollers. Thus, in both of the aforesaid patents an incipient carpet roll is formed between the nip of four rollers and control means must be provided for bodily moving two of the rollers as the carpet roll grows. Again the potential for damage to the carpet face or delicate backings is present.